Humble the Poet: Transform Your Relationship With Anxiety (6 Strategies for Overthinkers

can't wait to have them back on the show. Today's guest is none other than Humble the poet, an artist, rapper, spoken word artist, international best selling author, and former elementary school teacher.

people that really helped us grow. And so it's just like people who believed in the show when it was you know, finding its way, and you were one of them.

do is reevaluate our relationship with it. Right now, where we're at is we medicate, avoid, and distract, and all of those are understandable coping mechanisms. They help us in the moment, they help us feel better, but none of that in the long term is going to help us become better. And what it is is we just have to pay attention to what anxiety and anxious feelings are

trying to tell us. And the big thing with that is changing our relationship in a way that makes us not think like, oh, because I'm having anxious feelings, that must be weak, something's wrong with me. Nobody else is dealing with this, and it's like, no, you are absolutely normal for having anxious feelings. And to start that's the first idea. We have to understand, treating ourselves with grace

that this is completely normal. And then once we get there, we can start this journey going from managing it in helpful ways and then also growing from it. We don't want to just keep soothing anxiety. We want to gain strength through paying attention and understanding what it's trying to tell us.

showing up in my life in different ways. Now, if anxiety shows up in the same way, it's because I'm not learning, I'm not strengthening, I'm not hearing the signal as you just called it, absolutely, and it's going to show up in different ways because even if I hear the signal of anxiety here, anxiety is going to show up in another way over here. And so I love that you really make it clear off the bat that this isn't about solving a problem. Yeah right, it's not about getting rid of it.

comes from resisting these emotions. It's not the emotions themselves. Anxious feelings aren't harming us. Resisting and avoiding these anxious feelings or what's actually doing the damage.

want to feel. I remember when I was anxious about the fact that I hated my job, my career wasn't really going where I wanted it to go. But then I was anxious about leaving. I realized the problem was my anxiety was all based on the fact I had limited options.

and white. And as we start doing that, more options arise, and we also start to realize often the fear that I'm dealing with is related to a story that I've told myself that I can only do this, or I've gone so far, I've climbed this mountain, and now people will seeing them a failure if I have to climb all the way back down to find a new mountain. So I realized, keeping our mind open, keeping our hearts open, requires curiosity, and that really is what courage is. And

often we think this is a light switch. We think, you know, either I'm confident or I'm not confident. I'm going to fix this or I'm not. And it's like, really, no, it's a dimmer and it's not simply a failing on our part if we start to feel like this. We live in a society that really encourages us to Okay, well, if this is difficult, let's rearrange our lives to avoid it.

You know. A personal story for example, this book was inspired through one of our conversations when I was reaching out to you to come on the podcast the Last Book, and I explained that I feel a lot of anxiety around asking for help and you know, and you said many beautiful words to me to help soothe that, but I didn't address the fear of rejection I had. I didn't address any of that. And then I caught myself saying, well, you know what, maybe this will be the last book

and I'll never have to ask for a favor. Again, that is not healing. That is me rearranging my life so I don't have to face the thing that is giving me anxious feelings. And there's no growth in that. That is me temporarily managing it because I'm going to have to ask for help. And what we have to realize is these challenges are an invitation for growth. Our

triggers are an invitation for growth. There's an opportunity here for us to not only deal with them in a healthy way, but then also to growth through them because all of our growth happens outside of our comfort. And that's a really interesting thing where I've realized, I'm like, Okay, I can feel better by avoiding asking for help, or I can be better by leaning into this and being okay with that.

way that I didn't have to do it. And as I grew older and you realize the value of getting stronger and taking care of your body, not just esthetically but for the purpose of health, like to actually live a healthy life, a strong life. You start going, well, wait a minute, actually, it was only doing the thing and turning up when I didn't want to that has left me feeling better and stronger as opposed to when I was running away from it, I was just getting weaker and weaker.

Every time we have a negative experience that we get triggered, we're giving ourselves data. That data is a gift for our self awareness so we can better understand who we are and it's just like you said, if you want to help me move a couch, working out at the gym and voluntarily lifting heavy things, we'll prepare you for that. It's the same thing with our mental health. We have

to voluntarily put ourselves in uncomfortable situations. We have to challenge ourselves on purpose voluntarily, so when challenges find us, we're more resilient, we're more confident, we'll feel more safe to deal with that stuff.

can to see how strong we can be. We can only get stronger through struggle, and if we voluntarily put ourselves in stressful situations. And it could be even like think video games. We're not going to buy a video game if it's easy. You know. We want there to be a challenge. We want to fall on our face, get back up and try again. And it's the same thing with life. It's this is how our batteries get charged. It comes through choosing to do hard things voluntarily on purpose.

And that can be anything for some people. It could be a specific art. It could be drawing, it could be working out, it could be jiu jitsu, it could be any type of challenge. And this is going to charge our batteries so much more than a two week vacation lying on a beach doing absolutely nothing.

built a new skill, whatever it may have been. And so this idea that I need to feel confident before I do something, I need to not feel anxiety before I do something is actually quite unnatural. How do we get comfortable with discomfort? How do we get comfortable with uncertainty when we're wired to want things to feel good and be comfortable.

day know how to read. We started by learning the alphabet, learning the sounds, two little words, three little words, four little words, until we could all read big, complex novels. That was like a fourteen to fifteen year journey. You know, we may not have realized that was happening because it was in school. It was fun. We may not have had a choice we had to go anyways. But as adults, the thing is all of our growth came from doing

the struggling with a book when you were reading it. Now, as we become idols, we avoid all these things that are struggling. And it's really reevaluating our relationship with difficult things and challenges. And it's absolutely correct. Both motivation and confidence they don't come before action. You can't wait till you're motivated to do something. Doing something will make you motivated,

Doing something will make you confidence. And this also brings up a really important idea that as we have this conversation, this is really going to hit people logically like, oh that makes so much sense. That makes so much sense. But for the body to really believe this, you can't make sense to the body. You have to practice this. Yeah, you know, if I asked you to stand up and fall backwards and I say I'll catch you, your brain might be like I trust them. Your body is still

going to be a little bit nervous. Let's say I catch you, and then I'm like, let's do it again. You'll be a little less nervous, but you're still going to have some nerves. We might have to do it fifteen times for your body to completely trust the process. We have to practice. Practice makes progress, and we have to get out of this binary of like I can't do it, or I'm perfect at it. I can't do it,

or I've mastered it. We have to just continually be on a journey and celebrate the progress that comes from that, and that progress is what builds our confidence and slowly turn up that dial because that's the only way it's going to happen.

that anxiety. So when our intelligence grows, now all of a sudden, our imagination is being used to invent threats, right to detect threats, things that may or may not happen, and then that holds us back from actually acting because the triggers are at Magdalah. We have a little tiny part of our brain, the side of an almond, called the amygdalah. In the book, I call it our survival brain, and it's like a very undertrained but loving bodyguard that

wants to protect you from everything. But its definition of danger is uncertain, unrecognizable, unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and these we know aren't things that are actually dangerous. Struggle isn't danger, challenge isn't danger. But when we come across that, we're gonna speak ourselves out of it. So it's really important to understand this kind of idea that we need to feel

the fear and do it. Anyways, resilientiance doesn't feel good when you're being resilient, when you have to be resilient, when you have to be strong, it's not going to be a great feeling, and that's okay. Building resilience voluntarily doing difficult things may not be a good feeling, but that's okay because we're not here to live a life without suffering. We're here to see our own potential and see how much we can endure. And again, it's not

about putting yourselves in uncomfortable and dangerous situations. It's about realizing that life is chaotic, life is random, most of it is out of our control. Let's stop tensing ourselves by trying to hold onto everything, let the chips fall where they may, and trust ourselves that we can handle whatever's come in our way.

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fear and do it anyway. And then I remember when I went through some real stuff and I was like, oh, and at the same time, I remember that I'd been through, like you just said, real stuff when I was younger, and I never gave myself credit for it because I just assumed that that's what life was. I didn't realize how much hardship i'd been through in my early years because to me, it was just normal. And I think

that's true for a lot of people. And then there's the other side of it, where it's like I may talk about these ideas, I may hear them, but then life's going to throw a challenge at me.

then those coping mechanisms became habits. And then as adults, we continue those coping mechanisms even though we have access to more helpful ones. And instead of looking back and being like, well, I'm a product of all this trauma, or I'm a product of I made all these poor choices and now I'm stuck in this habit loop, just be like, look, my mental health has always been on my team. It's always been helping me. Now we just

need to upgrade it with family. I do view them as the ultimate boss in this world of anxiety because it's like they can push our buttons because they install the buttons.

like the smoke detector going off. Instead of pulling out the battery, ripping the smoke detector off the ceiling, putting a piece of tape over the light, let's look for the smoke, you know. So when we're at home and these anxious feelings start coming up, this is an opportunity for us to start exploring and figuring out what it is. And as simple as feeling the feelings, you know, and maybe in a moment it may not be the best time for you, So do whatever you do to suits.

You know, if it's if you got to go and look at your phone, please do what you got to do. Look at your phone. If you've got to go distract yourself, if you've got to medicate, you got to go have a cigarette, whatever you normally do. Cool. But the next day, when you're well rested, you've had a glass of water, you're hydrated, you know, you haven't read a bad text message, your bad email. Yet you're in a good place. Voluntarily

go back into that. Maybe pull out a journal and be like, what is it about my family situation that's there? And now you're in a good place to peel back these layers and voluntarily lean into a trigger. And once we lean into it, that's the way it's actually going to heal. And then once it heals, we'll have room for something new to come. It's never going to be I've healed and I live ever after. We're not. We

don't live this linear life. It's a cycle. And as you said, like you thought you can handle stuff until something new came. That's not a feeling on your part. That's the next level for you to build that strength and then as you as you've come out of that, which I've definitely seen you have, and you've come out much more wise, much more strong, and much more compassionate,

much more kind to yourself and other people. Now something new may come, a new curveball may come, and as you continue practicing your swing, you'll be able to handle that as well. And that's what I believe our mental health should be, should be this confidence that, hey, it will be hard, but I'm not afraid of heart. Having a hard day does not mean I've experienced trauma. Having a person that is difficult to be with doesn't instantly

make them toxic. You know, we've got to this point where mental health awareness has increased, but we may have swung the pendulumvel too far where now we've created identities out of these things. Let's not create an identity. It's okay, things are going to be challenging and let's train and trust ourselves to handle it. And that's only going to come through practice.

And I think that's what it is for life. It's almost like you can't fire drill everything, because that's where anxiety comes from too, because you're like, I'm going to prepare for everything possibly bad that could happen, and that could be an unlimited list. But at the same time, it's having the confidence that I've built the skills to know I can deal with certain things. And by the way, there will be curveboards that I don't have a clue with. I want to go back to what you said about family.

What do you do when the family that, as you said, installed the buttons, when they push them, what do you do?

boundaries can be universal. For example, I can have a boundary. Listen, if you were gonna remind me of my age and that I haven't gotten married and had any kids yet, and that you know I'm not living out my purpose in life, then obviously I'm not gonna call this much mom, you know, But if anybody else does that, it's going to be the exact same thing. It's teaching people say, listen, this is how I expect to be treated. I'm not telling you what to do, but if I'm not treated

this way, I probably won't be around here. And this is what my I'm setting a standard and I'm really teaching you how to be around me. And I think boundaries, at the end of the day, are saying I care about you so much that I want to improve our dynamic. And I think that's a really important thing when it comes to family, because that's the hardest place to set up boundaries because everybody is so used to it. And I'll be completely honest when somebody has hit me with boundaries,

it was uncomfortable for me. You're still used to things being a certain way. Sudden change for anybody is not going to be comfortable, and we have to approach this with a lot of grace, grace for ourselves and grace for other people. So I think boundaries is generally the first place, and then also having context and just being like, look, they really did try their best. When I worked with the therapist, they were always reminding me, listen, your parents

were in survival mode. They may not have been the most emotionally nurturing, but they were trying to put food on the table. They were trying to make sure you were good, you were safe, and like, that's what they were doing. That's all the tools that they had. And I think it's really important because what I realized, especially in the last year, is the kinder and more gracious I am to myself, the kinder and more gracious I

can be to other people, and vice versa. The more I put an effort to be more understanding and kinder to other people, the more effort I can put to be kinder and more gracious to myself. And that's removing judgment, which takes us back to courage through curiosity.

about it. So they're going to do that anyway. I think the challenge people have is they feel guilty for not loving their family, not being seen as a good person.

Maybe they even feel guilty for not delivering on the promise that they're or the expectation that their parents have, and then that guilt and shame, which you call like anxieties BFFs, Like it's really weird because you're like, now going you're breaking your boundary to make yourself feel better for how you take care of that person or because

you just love them, but now you're breaking it. But then they upset you again, so it gets really messy, Like how do we really define it in a way that we go, Yes, that makes sense, now I know why I'm going to keep it that way.

a lot of us do that in childhood. We absorb other people's pain because we don't believe in their resilience either, like, well, I can handle it. I'll handle their pain. I don't want to make my mom upset. I can handle their pain. I'm robbing you of the resilience that's going to come from you dealing with that challenge, and I'm betraying myself,

increasing my own anxious feelings. And so I think, what we really need to do, And I have a quote the book, you can't guilt a caterpillar into becoming a butterfly. You know, we can't speed any of this up. So I really think sometimes when we use this word guilt, it really goes around us romanticizing some of these things. But really what it is it's people pleasing. It's wanting people to like us at the expense of us ever

actually experiencing any real love. Establishing boundaries and then honoring your own boundaries. That's being your best friend, that's protecting yourself to a level. And as I said, this is just the beginning to manage it. At the end of the day, the secret here isn't to avoid these people, is to open a dialogue, open more vulnerability, build the connection,

figure out where they're coming from, and strengthen the relationship. Accordingly, it's not we don't want to get to this point where anybody who presents any type of struggle or challenge for us we just continually cut them off from our lives, because this is just us rearranging our life to make it easier. No, we got to lean into the challenges, but just immediately, the boundaries got to be the first step.

how anxious friends equals anxious you. To challenge today is a lot of our friends are anxious. If we get rid of all of our anxious friends, we may not have any friends left.

we can connect on if I'm vulnerable with you. When I share a vulnerable story, I'm generally going to be nervous about it because I'm afraid that you're going to judge me. And I'm sure your listeners have been in that situation. But the vast majority of the time that we're vulnerable with somebody, we're inviting them to be vulnerable with us. In the book, I talk about this idea of my friend in Berlin inviting me to a spa and I was excited to go to this spa and

had hurt my shoulder dragging a broken suitcase. And we're on the way to the spa and he goes, I love how open minded you are, and I was like, why are you thanking me for being open minded. And then I realized he mixed up the word spa with sauna, and we are going to an all nude sauna and I'm about to see and this is the longest friendship I've ever had. I've been his friends since we're three. So I'm about to see him naked and a whole bunch of other people naked in Berlin and the voices,

and I realized I wasn't afraid of being naked. I was afraid of being judged and afraid of standing out, afraid of not understanding a custom. How this is going to work. I'm in a different continent. And the first thing, you know that helped was admitting to him because he had just propped me up, saying, you're so open minded. I love that you're willing to do this. I didn't

want to let him down. My people pleasing started to come up, but I'm like, look, now that you've clarified what this is like and this is not just a candlelight massage, I'm very nervous. And his response was I'm nervous too, and we strengthened the connection and it wasn't the easiest experience. But we got through it and it was a funny story, and you had to realize every thing that makes us interesting is a challenge that we've

made ourselves go through. And I think the first step again, and I'm always gonna say this is the first step, not the absolute solution. It's going to be sharing your anxious feelings in a way that you don't want identify with them. I'm encouraging people and I got this from

Melo Robbins. Don't say I'm anxious, say I feel anxious because and that allows you to be a human having an emotion and trying your best to figure out why I feel anxious because I'm about to be naked in front of you and a whole bunch of other people in this country, and I don't know if people are going to judge me or what have you. And I think that invites connection and if you get and someone else will be like, oh, I feel anxious because I

don't know if I have job security. And now we can talk about it, and once we start revealing it, that's really the first step to healing, you know, jay Z said it, because you can't heal what you don't reveal. And we all know there's a value to this, because every single person has felt super stressed in their brain about how much things they have to do, and then they're write down the to do list and it's like three things, and they're like, why did that feel so

heavy in my brain? It's just getting it out is important. And we are, again in a society that structures a lot of individualism, a lot of isolation. We need community. It's not, as I said, it's not about cutting off your friends who feel anxious. Everybody feels anxious, and we

probably shouldn't label them as our anxious friends. However, if they decide to cling onto the identity and they are more interested in proving how hard life is versus looking at it as an opportunity to improve from it, then that definitely is a friendship worth reevaluating.

and raised in Canada, across the street from me. He's of Jamaican descent, and he had gotten married and they both moved to Berlin together, and I guess maybe eight years of him not speaking English every day, but it was most definitely I remember it vividly taking one of my parents' suitcases back then, because this is when I just started traveling, and you know, my parents bought us, you know, like six pieces for like thirty bucks, like cheap.

Don't buy cheap luggage. There's a reason. And the wheel broke off and I was in London and I was dragging it up the stairs from the tube and I had pulled a muscle in my shoulder and I was so excited for a massage and he said. I remember, She's like, yeah, we're gonna go to the SPA. It's

gonna be great. It was definitely him not speaking enough English for eight years, and it totally and it ended up becoming a situation where you know, now it's a great story, but all the emotions were there and it didn't get easier the moment I was there. The longer I stayed there, the more my body was able to trust, Okay, this is the thing again, and this is the big thing. Our brains will understand this immediately, our bodies have to catch up. And the way to reinforce it with our

bodies is through practice. We have to practice this. We can't just hear an inspirational quote once and be like, all right, I figured it out. We have to practice.

in the pool. So this is October in la and I went in the pool and I couldn't stay in for ten seconds because I didn't keep practicing. Yeah, there's a value to the practice, but if you don't keep practicing, and in terms of having self compassion, that's okay.

barely in the hotel. I would have been having to work out like ten pm or something, and I prioritized my sleep over my workout, and there was a part of me that was just beating myself up, going, ah, man, you just missed four days. You didn't work out, Like, oh man, you know you have got the discipline.

a sudden, you're refreshed. And so there's so much truth in the fact that guilt blocks growth. You don't guilt yourself into becoming better. It doesn't work that way. You encourage yourself, like you got to talk to yourself. I think they've done studies where they looked at how teachers talk to students, and you used to be a teacher. Teachers who just told their students that they weren't small. They didn't figure it out. That never made a student better.

Student who believed that their teacher believed in them made a huge difference to their result in their psychology.

a little eight year old inside of us. There'sn't in a child there that needs to be spoken with love and grace. It's not coddling, it's actually realizing that we have to be our own best friend. We have to be our own biggest advocate and viewer through the lens of is it helpful? Is it really helpful? Especially for folks who are like self employed, are trying to do things? Is it helpful to continually guilt yourself to do stuff? Do you get better results that way? Is it taking

you where you want to go? Or can we have the conversation of like, hey, okay, you know what, you were making a lot of progress working out. You know, you were seeing great things happen, and now all of a sudden you got to go on tour and now it may be eating room service and it may be sleeping in different time zones, and that's okay, that's what this requires, and then we'll get back to the other stuff and that's totally good. And for me it's always like, hey,

maybe one more game of FIFA before we start. And then for me, the big one was like, hey, let's go back in our history. You've been humbled upon with self employed for well fifteen years now. Have you ever played too many video games and messed up? Did you ever mess up a deadline? Did you ever mess up an opportunity because you played too many video games? No? Us,

trust us. Let's trust ourselves. Go back into your own history and let that be the support and to speak to these words because a lot of these voices are not ours. They sound like us. They were both written by other people, these criticisms for somebody else, and they just sound like they're our voice. And we give them value. We don't have to believe everything we think, because those thoughts are often there just to keep us in staces.

It's like, well, we're going to try to scare you guilty to stay where you are because if you try something new, we consider something new dangerous.

do something. And you know what, don't you feel this way that we all know what we need to do. Even when I'm giving a keynote, I'm recording a podcast, it might I'm thinking everyone already knows what they need to do. Most people, unless you do something specific, like I'm trying to figure out how to build a business and I need to I don't. I may not know, but most of us know what we need to change in our life, like we're actually quite aware of it. What is the block? From I know to I am?

And in the middle, it's like, the should is what ruins it? Almost right, we keep saying I should work out four times a week because we know we should. But then why is the should the block?

making things better, it's about finding flaws easier. So what we start to do is constantly look for flaws and that way that keeps us from having to do stuff right. So a lot of it's the same way I'm saying, curiosity is courage in disguise. A lot of this is fear in disguise. You know what it really what we're really just addressing is the fact that we're scared. And

here's the thing, It's okay to be scared. And what I would encourage anyone to look at is like, maybe the step you're trying to take is just too big, and maybe we've got to break it down in something a little bit more manageable, into baby steps. And if those baby steps feel too big, let's do micro baby steps. Then let's do micro baby tiptoes. Let's keep going smaller and smaller until that next step feels manageable, because the only thing we have to do is know what that

next step is and try it. And I think this goes back to having grace for ourselves, and this is why we overthink again. It goes back to this idea that we're so afraid that we're gonna trick ourselves to think that we're solving a problem by constantly running it on a treadmill and going through loop and now we're just inventing new problems to solve them. And all of that results in nothing, but it comes to anxious feelings. You can't think your way out of them. You have

to act your way out of them. You know, there is something brilliant about Nike's saying, just do it. It really is. Just do it. It really is feel to fear and do it anyways and again, these are catchy lines that we've heard a million times. Our body isn't going to immediately accept them. We have to start small and practice that every day and say, you know, for five minutes, I am going to just do it.

a chance against this guy regardless. But what he was addressing was the pauses and the avoidance that I was doing in real time. And now when I'm sending a text message, sending an email, making a request, I keep hearing his voice. It's like, stop thinking so much. We all are going to make mistakes. The fear is the mistake I might use, I might say the wrong thing. If I ask Jake for this favor, let me reread it, approveriate at forty five times, let me run through chat JPT.

Let me do all of these things, and it's like, what what we're just doing is ruminating to avoid the discomfort, and what we're really saying is this is hard. I don't want to do it. And that's okay, this is hard, I don't want to do it. That is a normal human feeling. But we have to go through that in order for us to grow. We'll start by being kind to ourselves and like, it is hard, let's take a break,

but less address it. And sometimes it might be like, hey, we'll do it first thing in the morning when we're the most fresh that concept swallow the frog, will do that now. Or it could be like, hey, maybe this is too big of a step. Maybe today step one is this and that really and it is a reflection and go back to the people that we're around. If we're around people that we can share this stuff with, and they speak to us with that same level of grace, which is like, no, like you did a lot today,

it really matters. And I remember this. In the beginning of my career, I came up with Lily seeing you know who we both know and as you know, one of the hardest workers I've ever seen, one hundred percent and it really signaled to me how hard I needed to work. And it was always this idea that if I wasn't working hard enough, she may think less of me.

And then fast forward during the pandemic, I remember this having a call and she's like, look like you're your only job right now is like, stay healthy and stay in a good place. Don't try to be productive. We've been signaled that we need to be productive all the time. There's honor in suffering, there's honor in burning out. It's

a badge of honor. And it's like, it's not a badge of honor, it's a warning sign that we're abandoning ourselves by doing too much, especially in the society that we live in, where there isn't the word enough doesn't

exist when it comes to our productivity. So it's really important to surround yourself around people who are doing the same work, can have the same language, even if you're the first person to start these conversations, when what kind of to someone else will encourage them to be kinder to you as well.

I gave four keynotes in four days podcasts. But what was really interesting is that I'm at a place in my life where I've actually realized that waking up and working out actually sets me up to have more energy throughout the day. So now I'm fully convinced. Now if this was literally three or four years ago, I would have said, no, I need to have grace on myself. I'm gonna let myself lie in. I'm not gonna work out. Maybe I won't even work out for two three days

because I deserve a break. The thing is that actually didn't make me stronger or more resilient. It actually made me more sluggish. It actually slowed me down. So sometimes grace is actually choosing something that good for you, even if it doesn't feel good.

You're making all these excuses and then the graceful voices like, hey, just show up, try it out for a couple of minutes. If you don't feel good, sit against the wall. We see people doing it all the time. And the truth is, and then I go back into my history, you have always not wanted to go. You have never regretted going.

them healed to grow bigger. Let's continually put ourselves in challenging situations, whether it's a cold shower, whether it's holding a yoga pose, whether it's doing you know, calf phrases until you're feeling in the burn, any type of movement, any type of challenge where your mind is like I can't do anymore, Like, hey, let's just try to stay in a little bit longer. Let's do these things because

this will help build resilience. And it's one of the things in addition to creating connection, in addition to practicing that we do and we're realizing I don't want to do it, totally understand that you don't want to do it, but try it and see how you feel afterwards. Because just like working out, the harder the workout, the easier the day. Yeah, and let's apply that to our mental health.

Let's treat our mental health like a muscle. The more we work it early, the easier the rest of the day will be.

which one you are because some people. If you are someone who needs to do the hard thing first, and you keep trying to build up confidence through small things, you actually never ever get to the hard thing, or you'll feel like you'll take on a challenge that isn't big enough. Yes, And if you're someone who's like, oh my god, I need baby steps, and now your friend over here is lifting like ten times as much as you are, now you're pushing yourself, you won't do it either.

And that's why it's such an individual journey. But I find so much anxiety is around timelines. It's all around comparison. And I was thinking about this. When you're at school, the one thing you don't have anxiety about as much is people being ahead of you or people having figured something out, because everyone goes from seventh grade to eighth grade to ninth grade. All of a sudden when you graduate. Now someone's getting promoted first, and someone's getting promoted last.

Someone's getting engaged first and someone's getting engaged lost. Someone got the beautiful new apartment and someone is still living with their parents. All of a sudden, now there's this timeline effect where I'm now anxious because I'm not thirty and married and making six figures and whatever it may be building a family. How do you deal with that existential anxiety? Because this anxiety is more than the anxiety of just I'm anxious about talking to these people, I'm

anxious about this friend. This is like this existential anxiety that sometimes we just don't even want to think about, but it's in the back of our mind. Crap, I'm thirty and I'm not married, I'm fourteen, I don't have kids, right.

And so when we hear the cliche line comparison is the thief of joy, we're constantly stealing our joy by spending time on social media and comparing ourselves to people, and we're not even comparing ourselves to a real thing. We're comparing our behind the scenes to this highlight reel of what we put on social media. So the first thing I would say is reduce the amount of exposure you have to compare yourself to other people. I would

definitely make efforts to reduce my social media consumption. That would make a huge thing. I think also, the more we commit to understanding who we are, the more we start to realize that we need to design and develop a life for ourselves. I think currently we're just trying to deal with life. And I think as we commit to a mental health journey and voluntarily doing challenging things, we start to develop life and we start to understand

what matters to us, for you, for me. As we go through these different challenges, we're like, wait, this is the shoe that fits me, this is the one that doesn't. Oh, I can afford the fancy sports car, but I realize that really isn't for me. But I definitely want to make sure I have a great hotep or I want to definitely make sure I have you know, I have a friend who just sold the company, and I was like, Oh, what are you going to do? He goes, I'm going to get my mom a personal trainer so she can

open a jar until she's ninety. And it's like, this is someone who knows his priority. That's the first spand with the money, and that only comes through self awareness. Self awareness comes through paying attention to yourself and collecting information that's going to come when we have these anxious feelings. These are revealing things, you know. Triggers are a roadmap. They're telling us where the work can be done. So we have to abandon these ideas that like, oh, trigger warning,

I have to avoid my triggers. Oh I have to constantly be in a safe space. That's just us rearranging life to never gain and we're denying ourselves that self awareness. So I really think self awareness is going to be the first thing. So now and again, this is not going to make it all go away. I still get jealous when I see people on social media. I think the other thing we have to realize is envy helps

us understand what authentically matters to us. Let's say, for example, I watch you Know, I watch the show regularly you got a couple of guests on, then all of a sudden, a certain guest comes on, and let's say Rick Rubin comes on. I'm like, oh, I am so jealous. I wish I was in the room with Jay. I wish I knew this was happening. I wish I could have called j I wish I could have stood in the corner when I had that. What that is doing is

that's not a bad thing to experience. That's teaching me that, Okay, something that Rick says matters to me, So I should go deeper into that because it teach me what's important versus if you have another guest on who I'm like, Oh, that's cool, but I'm not really excited about that. So I think there's something there that I think is really important. And I think the other thing that's really important is realizing are we trying to catch up or are we

trying to improve? Are we trying to keep up with other people? And I think very often in going back to our families, it really often isn't to We're not doing things to make our family happy, We're doing things to keep them off our back, right, And I think there's there's definitely this when it comes to like, you know, being out here, going to advanced dressing up, all of this is like are we doing this to even stand

out at the party? Are we doing this to make sure we don't feel irrelevant that we were falling behind? And I think paying attention to that will challenge us to go back to what are our unique values? What are the things that we actually care about? And the more we discover that, the more we can share that with people. And for me, that also brings me into the thought of the gap between fitting in and belonging.

We create so much stress trying to fit in, and we have to wear masks to fit in, and that is definitely going to feed anxious feelings. Instead, if we have a better understanding of who we are, if we're constantly exploring this universe inside of us, we know who we are and we can find people that we feel comfortable being around where we belong to the quote in the book that I say, everybody is a social butterfly,

and maybe you're just in the wrong garden. And I think that's really important versus the self idea of I'm socially anxious. It's like or you're just in the room with the wrong people.

should be around South Asians. It's like, no, who am I? You know? I enjoy art. I should be around more folks who love art. I enjoy MMA. I should be around more folks that love MMA. I enjoy playing certain video games. I should be around people play those games. It's the deeper you understand yourself, the more you can share it. And it's really important because we want to be seen, we want to be heard, but the only way we can authentically be seen and heard is if

we show people who we authentically are. And you can't be yourself if you don't know yourself.

them the real you. And I think that's what it is, is that sometimes we don't even know the people that are around us because if that's not their vibe, if that's not their crewer people, they're never showing the real them. And I know that for me, even in a crowd full of people, I'll try and find the person who

wants to have a deep spiritual conversation. The amount of time me and you and Jeremy are good friends end up together at parties, right, So when we're at a party and I know humble and Jeremy are going to be there. I know we're going to find a little corner to have like a conversation, a discussion, a debate, a thought like that's what's going to happen. And that's why I don't feel out of place at the party.

But if you expecting me to just kind of have two second conversations with lots of people and just hang around that, that's not my That's not how I like to spend my time. And I've got to look for I can still be at a big party and look for my community. And I think again, it goes back to what you're saying. It's knowing yourself. Where people just go, oh no, I just don't like big parties. It's like no, no, no, But there's a way in every space, in every world.

It's kind of like people who have judgments about New York or LA or London or whatever it is that we can have these broad strokes judgments. It's like, no, you can create what you want here. It does exist. It just depends on if it exists in the way you want to create and how it works for you. But let's not sit around here and go I'm just not going to it's not possible in this place, because that's like saying one day you can get to the point where you go, this is on no one's my

type on planet Earth. Yes, right, And it's like that's not a healthy mindset to have.

done with that, go to what place you belong. We all have to be in places, and we all have to play the game to fit in. Sometimes it's not you know, we have to survive, and that might be part of the game. But then to counteract that, to avoid burning out by doing that, go ahead and be in a situation where you belong, be with your people, be with your tribe. And again, it still starts internally by figuring out who you authentically are.

something to grow from here. So when our heart is broken, when everything that we thought was is no longer the case, whether it's a broken relationship, whether it's losing something you care about, losing an identity, losing money, whatever it may be, there's an opportunity to grow in there.

in these cycles and anticipate things happening. And everybody listening knows how transformative that first heartbreak was, whatever it may be, and how much resilience can come from the moment it happens. I can't be here anymore. I can't deal with this, and then as time goes by, we start building resilience from it, and then all of a sudden, we are a much more rounded, three dimensional version of ourselves because of it. These hard times that form us and formulate

us as people. And this is why it's the idea of like, look, obviously I don't want to have super heavy days every single day, but I got to be able to trust myself to deal with them, or at least try my best to deal with them and at the very least not sabotage myself by not sleeping enough, not eating the right food, not drinking enough water, not

hanging out with people that give me energy. And I think that there's something important there, so I always look at it, especially as as my life has progressed where it's like the things that are breaking my heart right now are absolutely out of control. The people that I care about who have health issues, there's nothing I can do. I catch myself avoiding messages getting updates on some of these folks because it just it breaks my heart to think about. And it's like, this is me avoiding because

it's so overwhelming. But I speak to myself with grace and say, look, it's overwhelming. Let's get you back to where you got to get to. Let's feel better, and then we're going to lean into this. We have to lean into this because there's going to be some growth that comes from it. The fact that this impacts you so much, it's a sign that you care, beautiful, because we need to care about more things in this life.

And I think for me it's been realizing. And actually have a tattoo on my chest inverted so I can read it in the mirror says that any moment you're dust and it was inspired by a friend who had said it, but another friend and I specifically remember where I was when he said, he goes our problems are only real because we forget we're going to die, and when we think about all these things were zooming in

so much into our lives. But it's like we've heard the cliche, well this matter in five years, ten yures, Will it matter in ninety years? Will it matter in two hundred years? You know, any of us making out of this alive. And I think there's something really beautiful about that, where it's like we can only enjoy a movie because we know what's going to end. You know, if it was going on forever, if it's one of those TV shows that go on forever, we may not

appreciate it as much. It's the finiteism of it, and I think that has to do with life as well. In the book, I make a lot of jokes, and one of the big jokes is the secret pill to get rid of anxiety. I make up a joke about it, but at the end, I'm like, the actual magic pill is remembers you're going to die when you're in these moments that just feel completely overwhelming. If you can remember not just with your brain, but with your body that

you are going to die. And we have so many examples of that in history with people who have experienced near death experiences and then have thrived because they realized, I'm here for a deeper purpose. I'm here for a bigger purpose. I survived, you know, fifty cent survived nine shots and all of a sudden thrived in his career. It's like, that's the worst they can get me, not existing, So let's go. It's not no longer fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear of not being seen, because some

of these are the things that we just forget. We're living creatures that won't be here forever. And I think reminding yourself of that is really important. And there's a Buddhist and Eastern philosophy around Make it your goal to remember your mortality five times a day and watch the quality of your life improved. Allow that, make that part of the mantra, Make that part of the daily affirmations

that I won't be here forever. Pick the year that you know, like in the year twenty two to thirty five, neither of us will be here. Okay, let's remember that when we're worried about sending a text message and not getting a reply, or when we're worried about putting ourselves out there and potentially getting rejected, or when we worried about anything else. And I think that's really important. This isn't to minimize anybody's problems. It's to minimize the unnecessary

stress that we may come with that. And then we can realize that the stress isn't holding us back. The stress can actually stretch us to reveal our potential of

who we can actually be. Pressure builds diamonds. We can really become something beautiful and massive from this, when we no longer view challenges as an attack on our existence, but instead an opportunity for us to grow, for us to thrive, for us to increase our capacity to not only be amazing to ourselves, but being amazed with other people.

we're not thinking about her. On we don't need to have legacy, you know. Let's enjoy what we have while we have. The only thing we have is the present. Especially when we speak about Eastern philosophy, especially for people listening here, it really is us having to unlearn a lot of the stories that we were told. We were told these linear stories. Do this, do this, do this, get over this hump, and then everything will be smooth sailing, It will be happily ever after you can ride off

into the sunset. Everything will be great. And it's like, no, there's always a day after, halfily ever after, And instead of wishing for an easier life, let's work towards being able to hold more weight, because the weight's going to keep coming. And just as you're working out, fifteen years from now, the amount of effort you put working out will have to increase just for you to maintain where you're at. So it's the same thing with our mental health.

Right now. Our avoiding, our distracting, our medicating is us maintaining and by all means maintained. But at some point we want to get to the point where we're actually growing from it, and that's going to require us leaning into things being more difficult, having more difficult conversations, acknowledging difficult realities like our.

this book. There's also just these moments of you coming to visit in New York US, having a meals tia, a lot of FIFA and and just for the record, I want everyone to know Jay is the most frustrating person to play FIFA with because whenever you score on him, he'll congratulate you. He'll be like, great job, that was an awesome goal. He'll still beat you, but he'll do that so it's like you can't even like talk crap to him. It's so frustrating to like play somebody who

beats you but doesn't hold space for crap talk. Instead, he'll just like he'll, oh, let's watch the replay of that goal you got on me. That was so good, and then he'll score five more goals on me and it's so extremely frustrating. And but one thing that you said the last time we played is I had music playing. I had the volume down, and then you're like, this feels different if we turn the music off and we

put the volume on the game. You're like, Ooh, I like this, this gives me the right type of anxiety.

It's like, No, I got to have so much fun doing this with some of my favorite people, and you definitely are one of those people. So I deeply appreciate you for being endlessly supportive of this and all my projects.

just doing damage to ourselves. It's not going to be helpful. So let's embrace the change that's happening. Be curious about the change because that's where our courage can.